R. A. Salvatore, creator of the popular Dungeons & Dragons character Drizzt Do'Urden, joins us to discuss breaking into novel writing, bullying, and why a city of evil elves is a lot like Middle School.

Art by Todd Lockwood.

Geek's Guide to the Galaxy is hosted by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley.

You can download the MP3 for this episode here, subscribe to The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast feed here, and browse other episodes here.

This episode includes:

Part 1: Interview with R. A. Salvatore (1:23)

Topics covered: The snowstorm that changed Bob's life, sending his first novel to TSR, good timing, agent issues, figuring out the Forgotten Realms, the phone call that gave birth to Drizzt, inventing drow society, outcasts and bullies, how Second Edition almost killed Entreri, balancing game rules with believability, racism, the Salman Rushdie of Star Wars, Neverwinter, Curt Schilling and 38 Studios, new Drizzt books

John Joseph Adams is an anthologist, a writer, and a geek. He is the bestselling editor of the anthologies Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Way of the Wizard, and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Forthcoming anthologies include Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom (Simon & Schuster, 2012), Armored (Baen, 2012), and The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination (Tor, 2012). In 2011, he was nominated for two Hugo Awards and two World Fantasy Awards, and he has been called "the reigning king of the anthology world" by Barnes & Noble.com. He is also the editor of Lightspeed Magazine and Fantasy Magazine. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

David Barr Kirtley has published fiction in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy,Weird Tales, Lightspeed,Intergalactic Medicine Show, On Spec, and Cicada, and in anthologies such as New Voices in Science Fiction,Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and The Dragon Done It. Recently he's contributed stories to several of John's anthologies, including The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, and The Way of the Wizard. He's attended numerous writing workshops, including Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, James Gunn's Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and Orson Scott Card's Writers Bootcamp, and he holds an MFA in screenwriting and fiction from the University of Southern California. He also teaches regularly at Alpha, a Pittsburgh-area science fiction workshop for young writers. He lives in New York.